The ryot apologized for his stupidity, and Frank recognized that his retainer disapproved very strongly of such strict adherence to the truth. On the plea that they must hasten if the midday heat were to be avoided, they cut short the halt to less than an hour. When they came to tighten the girths again they found that Chumru’s horse had fallen lame. As Nejdi, too, was showing signs of stiffness, Malcolm mounted one of the spare animals and led the Arab. Chumru and the ryot bestrode the third horse, and under the guidance of one who knew every path, they set out for the Ganges.
There are few features of the landscape so complex in their windings as the foot-paths of India. Owing to the immense distances between towns—the fertile and densely populated Doab offers no standard of comparison for the remainder of a vast continent—roads were scarce and far between in Mutiny days. The Grand Trunk Road and the rivers Ganges and Jumna were the main arteries of traffic. For the rest, men marched across country, and the narrow ribands of field tracks meandered through plowed land and jungle, traversed nullah and hill and wood, and intersected each other in a tangle that was wholly inextricable unless one traveled by the compass or by well-known landmarks, where such were visible.
The ryot, of course, familiar with each yard of the route, practically followed a straight line. After a steady jog of an hour and a half they saw the silver thread of the Ganges from the crest of a small ridge that ran north and south. The river was then about three miles distant, and they were hurrying down the descent when they came upon an ekka, a little native two-wheeled cart, without springs, and drawn by a diminutive pony. Alone among wheeled conveyances, the ekka can leave the main roads in fairly level country, and this one had evidently brought a zemindar from a river-side village.
The man himself, a portly, full-bearded Mohammedan, was examining a growing crop, and his behavior, no less than the furtive looks cast at the newcomers by his driver, warned Malcolm that here, for a certainty, the Mutiny was a known thing. The zemindar’s face assumed a bronze-green tint when he saw the European officer, and the sulky-looking native perched behind the shafts of the ekka growled something in the local patois that caused the ryot sitting behind Chumru to squirm uneasily.
The other glanced hastily around, as though he hoped to find assistance near, and Chumru muttered to his master:
“Have a care, sahib, else we may hop on to a limed twig.”
The boldest course was the best one. Malcolm rode up to the zemindar, who was separated some forty paces from the ekka.
“I come from Lucknow,” he said. “What news is there from Fattehpore and Allahabad?”
The man hesitated. He was so completely taken aback by the sight of an armed officer riding towards him in broad daylight—for Malcolm having lost his own sword had taken Chumru’s—that he was hardly prepared to meet the emergency.